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BUYING A HORSE 

• William Dean Howells . 



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BUYING A HOKSE 




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BUYING A 
HORSE 



BY 



William Dean Howells 



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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

The Riverside Press Cavibridge 
1916 



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COPYRIGHT, 1S79 
BY IIOUGHTON, OSGOOD & CO. 

COPYRIGHT, I916 
BY HOUGHTON MIFFMN COMPANY i/ 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 




SEP 21 1916 



'CI.A437753 
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BUYING A HORSE 



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BUYING A HORSE 






F one has money enough, there 
seems no reason why one should 
not go and buy such a horse as he 
wants. This is the commonly accepted 
theory, on which the whole commerce in 
horses is founded, and on which my friend 
proceeded. 

He was about removing from Charles- 
bridge, where he had lived many happy 
years without a horse, farther into the 
country, where there were charming drives 
and inconvenient distances, and where a 
horse would be very desirable, if not quite 
necessary. But as a horse seemed at first 
an extravagant if not sinful desire, he be- 

r 3 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

gan by talking vaguely round, and rather 
hinting than declaring that he thought 
soDQewhat of buying. The professor to 
whom he first intimated his purpose flung 
himself from his horse's back to the grassy 
border of the sidewalk where my friend 
stood, and said he would give him a few 
points. " In the first place don't buy a 
horse that shows much daylight under him, 
unless you buy a horse-doctor with him ; 
get a short-legged horse ; and he ought to 
be short and thick in the barrel," — or 
words to that effect. " Don't get a horse 
with a narrow forehead : there are horse- 
fools as well as the other kind, and you 
want a horse with room for brains. And 
look out that he 's all right forward.^'' 

" What 's that ? " asked my friend, hear- 
ing this phrase for the first time. 

" That he is n't tender in his fore-feet, — 
that the hoof is n't contracted," said the 
professor, pointing out the well-planted 
foot of his own animal. 
[ 4 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

""What ought I to pay for a horse?" 
pursued my friend, struggling to fix the 
points given by the professor in a mind 
hitherto unused to points of the kind. 

" Well, horses are cheap, now ; and yor 
ought to get a fair family horse — You 
want a family horse?" 

"Yes." 

" Something you can ride and drive 
both ? Something your children can 
drive ? " 

" Yes, yes." 

" Well, you ought to get such a horse 
as that for a hundred and twenty-five dol- 
lars." 

This was the figure my friend had 
thought of ; he drew a breath of relief. 
" Where did you buy your horse ? " 

" Oh, I always get my horses " — the 
plural abashed my friend — "at the Chev- 
aliers'. If you throw yourself on their 
mercy, they '11 treat you well. I '11 send 
you a note to them." 

[ 5 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

" Do ! " cried my friend, as the profes- 
sor sprang upon his horse, and galloped 
away. 

My friend walked home encouraged % 
his purpose of buying a horse had not 
seemed so monstrous, at least to this 
hardened offender. He now began to an- 
nounce it more boldly ; he said right and 
left that he wished to buy a horse, but 
that he would not go above a hundred. 
This was not true, but he wished to act 
prudently, and to pay a hundred and 
twenty-five only in extremity. He car- 
ried the professor's note to the Chevaliers', 
who duly honored it, understood at once 
what my friend wanted, and said they 
would look out for him. They were sorry 
he had not happened in a little sooner, — 
they had just sold the very horse he 
wanted. I may as well say here that they 
were not able to find him a horse, but 
that they used him with the strictest 
honor, and that short of supplying his 
want they were perfect. 
[ ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

In the mean time the irregular dealers 
began to descend upon him, as well as 
amateurs to whom he had mentioned his 
wish for a horse, and his premises at cer- 
tain hours of the morning presented the 
effect of a horse-fair, or say rather a mu- 
seum of equine bricabrac. At first he 
blushed at the spectacle, but he soon be- 
came hardened to it, and liked the excite- 
ment of drivirjg one horse after another 
round the block, and deciding upon him. 
To a horse, they had none of the qualities 
commended by the professor, but they had 
many others which the dealers praised. 
These persons were not discouraged when 
he refused to buy, but cheerfully returned 
the next day with others differently ruin- 
ous. They were men of a spirit more 
obliging than my friend has found in other 
walks. One of them, who paid him a pref- 
atory visit in his library, in five minutes 
augmented from six to seven hundred and 
fifty pounds the weight of a pony-horse, 
[ 7 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

which he wished to sell. (" What you 
want," said the Chevaliers, " is a pony- 
horse," and my friend, gratefully catching 
at the phrase, had gone about saying he 
wanted a pony-horse. After that, hulking 
brutes of from eleven to thirteen hundred 
pounds were every day brought to him as 
pony-horses.) The same dealer came an- 
other day with a mustang, in whom was 
no fault, and who had every appearance of 
speed, but who was only marking time as it 
is called in military drill, I believe, when 
he seemed to be getting swiftly over the 
ground ; he showed a sociable preference 
for the curbstone in turning corners, and 
was condemned, to be replaced the next 
evening by a pony-horse that a child might 
ride or drive, and that especcially would 
not shy. Upon experiment, he shied half 
across the road, and the fact was reported 
to the dealer. He smiled compassionately. 
" What did he shy at ? " 
" A wheelbarrow.' * 

[ 8 J 



BUYING A HORSE 

" Well ! I never see tlie hoss yet that 
would n't shy at a wheelbarrow." 

My friend owned that a wheelbarrow 
was of an alarming presence, but he had 
his reserves respecting the self-control and 
intelligence of this pony-horse. The dealer 
amiably withdrew him, and said that he 
would bring next day a horse — if he 
could get the owner to part with a family 
pet — that would suit ; but upon investiga- 
tion it appeared that this treasure was what 
is called a calico-horse, and my friend, who 
was without the ambition to figure in the 
popular eye as a stray circus-rider, de- 
clined to see him. 

These adventurous spirits were not 
squeamish. They thrust their hands into 
the lathery mouths of their brutes to show 
the state of their teeth, and wiped their 
fingers on their trousers or grass after- 
wards, without a tremor, though my friend 
could never forbear a shudder at the sight. 
If sometimes they came with a desirable 
[ 9 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

animal, the price was far beyond his mod- 
est figure ; but generally they seemed to 
think that he did not want a desirable ani- 
mal. In most cases, the pony-horse pro- 
nounced sentence upon himself by some 
gross and ridiculous blemish ; but some- 
times my friend failed to hit upon any ten- 
able excuse for refusing him. In such an 
event, he would say, with an air of easy 
and candid comradery, " Well, now, what 's 
the matter with him ? " And then the 
dealer, passing his hand down one of the 
pony-horse's fore-legs, would respond, with 
an upward glance of searching inquiry at 
my friend, " Well, he 's a leetle mite ten- 
der for'a'd." 

I am afraid my friend grew to have a 
cruel pleasure in forcing them to this ex- 
posure of the truth ; but he excused him- 
self upon the ground that they never ex- 
pected him to be alarmed at this tenderness 
forward, and that their truth was not a 
tribute to virtue, but was contempt of his 
[ 10 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

ignorance. Nevertheless, it was truth ; 
and he felt that it must be his part there- 
after to confute the common belief that 
there is no truth in horse-trades. 

These people were not usually the own- 
ers of the horses they brought, but the 
emissaries or agents of the owners. Often 
they came merely to show a horse, and 
were not at all sure that his owner would 
part with him on any terms, as he was a 
favorite with the ladies of the family. An 
impenetrable mystery hung about the own- 
er, through which he sometimes dimly 
loomed as a gentleman in failing health, 
who had to give up his daily drives, and 
had no use for the horse. There were 
cases in which the dealer came secretly, 
from pure zeal, to show a horse whose 
owner supposed him still in the stable, and 
who must be taken back before his ab- 
sence was noticed. If my friend insisted 
upon knowing the owner and conferring 
with him, in any of these instances, it was 
[ 11 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

darkly admitted that he was a gentleman 
in the livery business over in Somerville 
or down in the Lower Port. Truth, it 
seemed, might be absent or present in a 
horse-trade, but mystery was essential. 

The dealers had a jargon of their own, 
in which my friend became an expert. 
They did not say that a horse weighed a 
thousand pounds, but ten hundred ; he 
was not worth a hundred and twenty-five 
dollars, but one and a quarter ; he was not 
going on seven years old, but was coming 
seven. There are curious facts, by the 
way, in regard to the age of horses which 
are not generally known. A horse is 
never of an even age : that is, he is not 
six, or eight, or ten, but five, or seven, or 
nine years old ; he is sometimes, but not 
often, eleven ; he is never thirteen ; his 
favorite time of life is seven, and he rarely 
gets beyond it, if on sale. My friend found 
the number of horses brought into the 
world in 1871 quite beyond computation. 
I r^ ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

He also found that most hard-working 
horses were sick or ailing, as most hard- 
working men and women are ; that per- 
fectly sound horses are as rare as perfectly- 
sound human beings, and are apt, like the 
latter, to be vicious. 

He began to have a quick eye for the 
characteristics of horses, and could walk 
round a proffered animal and scan his 
points with the best. " What," he would 
ask, of a given beast, " makes him let his 
lower lip hang down in that imbecile man- 
ner ? " 

" Oh, he 's got a parrot-mouth. Some 
folks like 'em." Here the dealer would 
pull open the creature's flabby lips, and 
discover a beak like that of a polyp ; and 
the cleansing process on the grass or trou- 
sers would take place. 

Of another. " What makes him trot in 
that spread-out, squatty way, behind? " he 
demanded, after the usual tour of the 
block. 

[ 13 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

" lie travels wide. Horse men prefer 
that." 

They preferred any ugliness or awk- 
wardness in a horse to the opposite grace 
or charm, and all that my friend could 
urge, in meek withdrawal from negotia- 
tion, was that he was not of an educated 
taste. In the course of long talks, which 
frequently took the form of warnings, he 
became wise in the tricks practiced by all 
dealers except his interlocutor. One of 
these, a device for restoring youth to an 
animal nearino^ the dano;erous limit of 
eleven, struck him as 'peculiarly ingenious. 
You pierce the forehead, and blow into it 
with a quill ; this gives an agreeable full- 
ness, and erects the drooping ears in a 
spirited and mettlesome manner, so that a 
horse coming eleven will look for a time 
as if he were coming five. 

After a thorouo;h course of the volunteer 
dealers, and after haunting the Chevaliers' 
stables for several weeks, my friend found 
[ 14 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

tliat not money alone was needed to buy a 
horse. The affair began to wear a sinister 
aspect. He had an uneasy fear that in sev- 
eral cases he had refused the very horse he 
wanted with the aplomh he had acquired in 
dismissing undesirable beasts. The fact 
was he knew less about horses than when 
he began to buy, while he had indefinitely 
enlarged his idle knowledge of men, of 
their fatuity and hollowness. He learned 
that men whom he had always envied their 
brilliant omniscience in regard to horses, 
as they drove him out behind their dash- 
ing trotters, were quite ignorant and help- 
less in the art of Ijuying ; they always got 
somebody else to buy their horses for 
them. " Find a man you can trust," they 
said, " and then put yourself in his hands. 
And never trust anybody about the health 
of a horse. Take him to a veterinary sur- 
geon, and have him go all over him." 

My friend grew sardonic ; then he grew 
melancholy and haggard. There was some- 
[ 15 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

thing very strange in the fact that a person 
unattainted of crime, and not morally dis- 
abled in any known way, could not take 
his money and buy such a horse as he 
wanted with it. His acquaintance began 
to recommend men to him. " If you want 
a horse, Captain Jenks is your man." 
" Why don't you go to Major Snaffle ? 
He 'd take pleasure in it." But my friend, 
naturally reluctant to trouble others, and 
sickened by long failure, as well as mad- 
dened by the absurdity that if you wanted 
a horse you must first get a man, neglected 
this really good advice. He lost his inter- 
est in the business, and dismissed with 
lack-lustre indifference the horses which 
continued to be brought to his gate. He 
felt that his position before the community 
was becoming notorious and ridiculous. 
He slept badly ; his long endeavor for a 
iorse ended in nightmares. 

One day he said to a gentleman whose 
turn-out he had long admired, " I wonder 
if you could n't find me a horse ! " 
[ 16 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

" Want a horse ? " 

" Want a horse ! I thought my need 
was known beyond the sun. I thought my 
want of a horse was branded on my fore- 
head." 

This gentleman laughed, and then he 
said, " I 've just seen a mare that would 
suit you. I thought of buying her, but I 
want a match, and this mare is too small. 
She '11 be round here in fifteen minutes, 
and I '11 take you out with her. Can you 
wait?" 

" Wait ! " My friend laughed in his 
turn. 

The mare dashed up before the fifteen 
minutes had passed. She was beautiful, 
black as a coal ; and kind as a kitten, said 
her driver. My friend thought her head 
was rather big. " Why, yes, she 's a pony- 
horse ; that 's what I like about her." 

She trotted off wonderfully, and my 
friend felt that the thing was now done. 

The gentleman, who was driving, laid 
[ 17 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

his head on one side, and listened. " Clicks, 
don't she ? " 

" She does click," said my friend oblig- 
ingly. 

" Hear it ? '* asked the gentleman. 

" Well, if you ask me," said my friend, 
" I donH hear it. What is clicking? " 

" Oh, striking the heel of her fore-foot 
with the toe of her hind-foot. Sometimes 
it comes from bad shoeing. Some people 
like it. I don't myself." After a while 
he added, " If you can get this mare for a 
hundred and twenty-five, you 'd better buy 
her." 

"Well, I will," said my friend. He 
would have bought her, in fact, if she had 
clicked like a noiseless sewing-machine. 
But the owner, remote as Medford, and in- 
visibly dealing, as usual, through a third 
person, would not sell her for one and a 
quarter ; he wanted one and a half. Be- 
sides, another Party was trying to get her ; 
and now ensued a negotiation which for 
[ 18 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

intricacy and mystery surpassed all the 
others. It was conducted in my friend's 
interest by one who had the ditficult task 
of keeping the owner's imagination in 
check and his demands within bounds, for 
it soon appeared that he wanted even more 
than one and a half for her. Unseen and 
inaccessible, he grew every day more un- 
manageable. He entered into relations 
with the other Party, and it all ended in 
his sending her out one day after my friend 
had gone into the country, and requiring 
him to say at once that he would give one 
and a half. He was not at home, and he 
never saw the little mare again. This con- 
firmed him in the belief that she was the 
very horse he ought to have had. 

People had now begun to say to him, 
" Why don't you advertise ? Advertise for 
a gentleman's pony-horse and phaeton and 
harness complete. You '11 have a perfect 
procession of them before night." This 
proved true. His advertisement, mystically 
[ 19 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

worded after the fashion of those things, 
found abundant response. But the estab- 
lishments which he would have taken he 
could not get at the figure he had set, and 
those which his money would buy he would 
not have. They came at all hours of the 
day ; and he never returned home after an 
an absence without meeting the reproach 
that now the very horse he wanted had 
just been driven away, and would not be 
brought back, as his owner lived in Biller- 
ica, and only happened to be down. A 
few equipages really appeared desirable, 
but in regard to these his jaded faculties 
refused to work : he could decide nothing ; 
his volition was extinct ; he let them come 
and go. 

It was at this period that people who had 
at first been surprised that he wished to buy 
a horse came to believe that he had bouojht 
one, and were astonished to learn that he 
had not. He felt the pressure of public 
opinion. 

r 20 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

He beffan to haunt the different sale-sta- 
bles iu town, and to look at horses with a 
view to buying at private sale. Every fa- 
cility for testing them was offered him, but 
he could not make up his mind. In feeble 
wantonness he gave appointments which 
he knew he should not keep, and, passing 
his days in an agony of multitudinous inde- 
cision, he added to the lies in the world the 
hideous sum of his broken engagements. 
From time to time he forlornly appeared 
at the Chevaliers', and refreshed his cor- 
rupted nature by contact with their sterling 
integrity. Once he ventured into their 
establishment just before an auction began, 
and remained dazzled by the splendor of a 
spectacle which I fancy can be paralleled 
only by some dream of a mediaeval tourna- 
ment. The horses, brilliantly harnessed, 
accurately shod, and standing tall on bur- 
nished hooves, their necks curved by the 
check rein and their black and blonde 
manes flowing over the proud arch, lustrous 

[ 21 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

and wrinkled like satin, were ranged in a 
glittering hemicycle. They affected my 
friend like the youth and beauty of his ear- 
liest evening parties ; he experienced a 
sense of bashfulness, of sickening personal 
demerit. He could not have had the au- 
dacity to bid on one of those superb creat- 
ures, if all the Chevaliers together had 
whispered him that here at last was the 
very horse. 

I pass over an unprofitable interval in 
which he abandoned himself to despair, and 
really gave up the hope of being able ever 
to buy a horse. During this interval he 
removed from Charlesbridge to the coun- 
try, and found himself, to his self-scorn and 
self-pity, actually reduced to hiring a livery 
horse by the day. But relief was at hand. 
The carpenter who had remained to finish 
up the new house after my friend had gone 
into it bethought himself of a firm in his 
place who brought on horses from the 
West, and had the practice of selling a 
[ 22 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

horse on trial, and constantly replacing it 
with other horses till the purchaser was 
suited. This seemed an ideal arrangement, 
and the carpenter said that he thought they 
had the very horse my friend wanted. 

The next day he drove him up, and upon 
the plan of successive exchanges till the 
perfect horse was reached, my friend 
bought him for one and a quarter, the fig- 
ure which he had kept in mind from the 
first. He bought a phaeton and harness 
from the same people, and when the whole 
equipage stood at his door, he felt the long- 
delayed thrill of pride and satisfaction. 
The horse was of the Morgan breed, a 
bright bay, small and round and neat, with 
a little head tossed high, and a gentle yet 
alert movement. He was in the prime of 
youth, of the age of which every horse de- 
sires to be, and was just coming seven. 
My friend had already taken him to a 
horse-doctor, who for one dollar had gone 
all over him, and pronounced him sound as 
[ 23 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

a fish, and complimented his new owner 
upon his acquisition. It all seemed too 
good to be true. As Billy turned his soft 
eye on the admiring family group, and suf- 
fered one of the children to smooth his 
nose while another held a lump of sugar to 
his dainty lips, his amiable behavior restored 
my friend to his peace of mind and his long- 
lost faith in a world of reason. 

The ridiculous planet, wavering bat-like 
through space, on which it had been im- 
possible for an innocent man to buy a suit- 
able horse was a dream of the past, and he 
had the solid, sensible old earth under his 
feet once more. He mounted into the phae- 
ton and drove off with his wife ; he re- 
turned and gave each of the children a drive 
in succession. He told them that any of 
them could drive Billy as much as they 
liked, and he quieted a clamor for exclu- 
sive ownership on the part of each by de- 
claring that Billy belonged to the whole 
family. To this day he cannot look back 

[ 24 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

to those moments without tenderness. If 
Billj had any apparent fault, it was an 
amiable indolence. But this made him all 
the safer for the children, and it did not 
really amount to laziness. While on sale 
he had been driven in a provision cart, and 
had therefore the habit of standing un- 
hitched. One had merely to fling the reins 
into the bottom of the phaeton and leave 
Billy to his own custody. His other habit 
of drawing up at kitchen gates was not con- 
firmed, and the fact that he stumbled on his 
way to the doctor who pronounced him 
blameless was reasonably attributed to a 
loose stone at the foot of the hill ; the mis- 
step resulted in a barked shin, but a little 
wheel-grease, in a horse of Billy's com- 
plexion, easily removed the evidence of 
this. 

It was natural that after Billy was 

bought and paid for, several extremely 

desirable horses should be offered to my 

friend by their owners, who came in person, 

[ 25 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

stripped of all the adventitious mystery of 
agents and middle-men. They were gen- 
tlemen, and they sjDoke the English habit- 
ual with persons not corrupted by horses. 
My friend saw them come and go with 
grief ; for he did not like to be shaken in 
his belief that Billy was the only horse in 
the world for him, and he would have liked 
to purchase their animals, if only to show 
his appreciation of honor and frankness and 
sane language. Yet he was consoled by 
the possession of Billy, whom he found in- 
creasingly excellent and trustworthy. Any 
of the family drove him about ; he stood 
unhitched ; he was not afraid of cars ; he 
was as kind as a kitten ; he had not, as the 
neighboring coachman said, a voice, though 
he seemed a little loively in coming out of 
the stable sometimes. He went well un- 
der the saddle ; he was a beauty, and if he 
had a voice, it was too great satisfaction in 
his personal appearance. 

One evening after tea, the young gentle- 

[ 26 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

man, who was about to drive Billy out, 
stung by the reflection that he had not 
taken blackberries and cream twice, ran 
into the house to repair the omission, and 
left Billy, as usual, unhitched at the door. 
During his absence, Billy caught sight of 
his stable, and involuntarily moved towards 
it. Finding himself unchecked, he gently 
increased his pace ; and when my friend 
looking up from the melon-patch which 
he was admiring, called out, " Ho, Billy ! 
Whoa, Billy ! " and headed him off from 
the gap, Billy profited by the circumstance 
to turn into the pear orchard. The elastic 
turf under his unguided hoof seemed to 
exhilarate him ; his pace became a trot, a 
canter, a gallop, a tornado ; the reins flut- 
tered like ribbons in the air ; the phaeton 
flew ruining after. In a terrible cyclone 
the equipage swept round the neighbor's 
house, vanished, reappeared, swooped down 
his lawn, and vanished again. It was in- 
credible. 

[ 27 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

My friend stood transfixed among his 
melons. He knew that his neighbor's 
children played under the porte-cochere 
on the other side of the house which Billy 
had just surrounded in his flight, and prob- 
ably .... My friend's first impulse was 
not to go and see, but to walk into his 
own house, and ignore the whole affair. 
But you cannot really ignore an affair of 
that kind. You must face it, and com- 
monly it stares you out of countenance. 
Commonly, too, it knows how to choose 
its time so as to diso;race as well as crush 
its victim. His neiglibor had people to 
tea, and long before my friend reached 
the house the host and his guests were all 
out on the lawn, having taken the precau- 
tion to bring their napkins with them. 

" The children ! " gasped my friend. 

"Oh, they were all in bed," said the 
neighbor, and he began to laugh. That 
was right ; my friend would have mocked 
at the calamity if it had been his neigh- 

[ 28 J 



BUYING A HORSE 

bor's. *' Let us go and look up your pha- 
eton." He put his hand on the naked 
flank of a fine young elm, from which the 
bark had just been stripped. " Billy seems 
to have passed this way." 

At the foot of a stone-wall four feet 
high lay the phaeton, with three wheels 
in the air, and the fourth crushed flat 
against the axle ; the willow back was 
broken, the shafts were pulled out, and 
Billy was gone. 

*' Good thing there was nobody in it," 
said the neighbor. 

" Good thing it did n't run down some 
Irish family, and get you in for damages," 
said a guest. 

It appeared, then, that there were two 
good things about this disaster. My friend 
had not thought there were so many, but 
while he rejoiced in this fact, he rebelled 
at the notion that a sorrow like that ren- 
dered the sufferer in any event liable for 
damages, and he resolved that he never 
[ 29 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

would have paid them. But probably he 
would. 

Some half-grown boys got the phaeton 
right-side up, and restored its shafts and 
cushions, and it limped away with them 
towards the carriage-house. Presently an- 
other half-grown boy came riding Billy up 
the hill. Billy showed an inflated nostril 
and an excited eye, but physically he was 
unharmed, save for a slight scratch on 
what was described as the off hind-leg; 
the reader may choose which leg this was. 

" The worst of it is," said the guest, 
" that you never can trust 'em after they 've 
run off once." 

" Have some tea ? " said the host to my 
friend. 

" No, thank you," said my friend, in 
whose heart the worst of it rankled ; and 
he walked home embittered by his guilty 
consciousness that Billy ought never to 
have been left untied. But it was not 
this seK-reproach ; it was not the muti- 
[ 30 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

lated phaeton ; it was not the loss of 
Billy, who must now be sold ; it was the 
wreck of settled hopes, the renewed sus- 
pense of faith, the repetition of the trag- 
ical farce of buying another horse, that 
most grieved my friend. 

Billy's former owners made a feint of 
supplying other horses in his place, but 
the only horse supplied was an aged vet- 
eran with the scratches, who must have 
come seven early in our era, and who, 
from his habit of getting about on tip- 
toe, must have been tender for'a'd beyond 
anything of my friend's previous experi- 
ence. Probably if he could have waited 
they might have replaced Billy in time, 
but their next installment from the West 
produced nothing suited to his wants but 
a horse with the presence and carriage of 
a pig, and he preferred to let them sell 
Billy for what he would bring, and to 
trust his fate elsewhere. Billy had fallen 
nearly one half in value, and he brought 
[ 31 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

very little — to his owner ; though the 
new purchaser was afterwards reported to 
value him at much more than what my 
friend had paid for him. These things 
are really mysteries ; you cannot fathom 
them; it is idle to try. My friend re- 
mained grieving over his own folly and 
carelessness, with a fond hankering for 
the poor little horse he had lost, and the 
belief that he should never find such aU' 
other. Yet he was not without a philan- 
thropist's consolation. He had added to 
the stock of harmless pleasures in a de- 
gree of which he could not have dreamed. 
All his acquaintance knew that he had 
bought a horse, and they all seemed now 
to conspire in asking him how he got on 
with it. He was forced to confess the 
truth. On hearing it, his friends burst 
into shouts of laughter, and smote their 
persons, and stayed themselves against 
lamp-posts and house-walls. They begged 
his pardon, and then they began again, 
[ 32 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

and shouted and roared anew. Since the 

gale which blew down the poet 's 

chimneys and put him to the expense of 
rebuilding them, no joke so generally satis- 
factory had been offered to the community. 
My friend had, in his time, achieved the 
reputation of a wit by going about and 
and saying , " Did you know 's chim- 
neys had blown down ? " and he had now 
himself the pleasure of causing the like 
quality of wit in others. 

Having abandoned the hope of getting 
anything out of the people who had sold 
him Billy, he was for a time the prey of 
an inert despair, in which he had not even 
spirit to repine at the disorder of a uni- 
verse iu which he could not find a horse. 
No horses were now offered to him, for it 
had become known throughout the trade 
that he had bought a horse. He had 
therefore to set about counteracting this 
impression with what feeble powers were 
left him. Of the facts of that period he 
[ 33 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

remembers with confusion and remorse the 
trouble to which he put the owner of the 
pony-horse Pansy, whom he visited re- 
peatedly in a neighboring town, at a loss 
of time and money to himself, and with no 
result but to embarrass Pansy's owner in 
his relations with people who had hired 
him and did not wish him sold. Some- 
thing of the old baffling mystery hung over 
Pansy's whereabouts ; he was with diffi- 
culty produced, and when en evidence he 
was not the Pansy my friend had expected. 
He paltered with his regrets ; he covered 
his disappointment with what pretenses ha 
could ; and he waited till he could tele- 
graph back his adverse decision. His con- 
clusion was that, next to proposing mar- 
riage, there was no transaction of life that 
involved so many delicate and complex re- 
lations as buying a horse, and that the 
rupture of a horse-trade was little less em- 
barrassing and distressing to all concerned 
than a broken engagement. There was a 
[ 34 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

terrible intimacy in the affair ; it was 
alarmingly personal. He went about sor- 
rowing for the pain and disappointment he 
had inflicted on many amiable people of 
all degrees who had tried to supply him 
with a horse. 

" Look here," said his neighbor, finding 
him in this low state, " why don't you get 
a horse of the gentleman who furnishes 
mine ? " This had been suggested before, 
and my friend explained that he had dis- 
liked to make trouble. His scruples were 
lightly set aside, and he suffered himself to 
be entreated. The fact was he was so dis- 
couraged with his attempt to buy a horse 
that if any one had now given him such a 
horse as he wanted he would have taken it. 

One sunny, breezy morning his neigh- 
bor drove my friend over to the beautiful 
farm of the good genius on whose kindly 
offices he had now fixed his languid hopes. 
I need not say what the landscape was in 
mid- August, or how, as they drew near tllfe 
[ 35 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

farm, the air was enriched with the breath 
of vast orchards of early apples, — apples 
that no forced fingers rude shatter from 
their stems, but that ripen and mellow un- 
touched, till they drop into the straw with 
which the orchard aisles are bedded ; it is 
the poetry of horticulture ; it is Art prac- 
ticing the wise and gracious patience of 
Nature, and offering to the Market a Sum- 
mer Sweeting of the Hesperides. 

The possessor of this luscious realm at 
once took my friend's case into considera- 
tion ; he listened, the owner of a hundred 
horses, with gentle indulgence to the shape- 
less desires of a man whose wildest dream 
was one horse. At the end he said, " I see 
you want a horse that can take care of 
himself." 

" No," replied my friend, with the in- 
spiration of despair. "I want a horse 
that can take care of me." 

The good genius laughed, and turned 
the conversation. Neither he nor my 
[ 36 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

friend's neighbor was a man of many 
words, and like taciturn joeople they talked 
in low tones. The three moved about the 
room and looked at the Hispano-Roman 
pictures ; they h^d a glass of sherry ; from 
time to time something was casually mur- 
mured about Frank. My friend felt that 
he was in good hands, and left the aifair 
to them. It ended in a visit to the stable, 
where it appeared that this gentleman 
had no horse to sell among his hundred 
which exactly met my friend's want, but 
that he proposed to lend him Frank while 
a certain other animal was put in training 
for the difficult office he required of a 
horse. One of the men was sent for 
Frank, and in the mean time my friend 
was shown some gaunt and graceful thor- 
oughbreds, and taught to see the difference 
between them and the plebeian horse. 
But Frank, though no thoroughbred, 
eclipsed these patricians when he came. 
He had a little head, and a neck gallantly 
[ 37 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

arched; he was black and plump and 
smooth, and though he carried himself 
with a petted air, and was a dandy to the 
tips of his hooves, his knowing eye was 
kindly. He turned it upon my friend 
with the effect of understanding his case at 
a glance. 

It was in this way that for the rest of 
the long, lovely summer peace was re- 
established in his heart. There was no 
question of buying or selling Frank ; there 
were associations that endeared him be- 
yond money to his owner ; but my friend 
could take him without price. The situa- 
tion had its humiliation for a man who had 
been arrogantly trying to buy a horse, but 
he submitted with grateful meekness, and 
with what grace Heaven granted him ; 
and Frank gayly entered upon the pecul- 
iar duties of his position. His first duty 
was to upset all preconceived notions of 
the advantage of youth in a horse. Frank 
was not merely not coming seven or nine, 
[ 08 ] 



BUYING X HORSE 

but his age was an even number, — he was 
sixteen ; and it was his owner's theory, 
which Frank supported, that if a horse was 
well used he was a good horse till twenty- 
five. 

The truth is that Frank looked like a 
young horse ; he was a dandy without any 
of the ghastliness which attends the preser- 
vation of youth in old beaux of anothex' 
species. When my friend drove him in 
the rehabilitated phaeton he felt that the 
turn-out was stylish, and he learned to 
consult certain eccentricities of Frank's in 
the satisfaction of his pride. One of these 
was a high reluctance to be passed on the 
road. Frank was as lazy a horse — but 
lazy in a self-respectful, aesthetic way — as 
ever was ; yet if he heard a vehicle at no 
matter how great distance behind him (and 
he always heard it before his driver), he 
brightened with resolution and defiance, 
and struck out with speed that made com- 
petition difficult. If my friend found that 
[ 39 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

the horse behind was likely to pass Frank, 
he made a merit of holding him in. If 
they met a team, he lay back in his phae- 
ton, and affected not to care to be going 
faster than a walk, any way. 

One of the things for which ho chiefly 
prized Frank was his skill in backing and 
turning. He is one of those men who be- 
come greatly perturbed when required to 
back and turn a vehicle; he cannot tell 
(till too late) whether he ought to pull the 
right rein in order to back to the left, or 
vice versa; he knows, indeed, the princi- 
ple, but he becomes paralyzed in its appli- 
cation. Frank never was embarrassed, 
never confused. My friend had but to 
say, " Back, Frank ! '* and Frank knew 
from the nature of the ground how far to 
back and which way to turn. He has 
thus extricated my friend from positions in 
which it appeared to him that no earthly 
power could relieve him. 

In going up hill Frank knew just when 
[ 40 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

to give himself a rest, and at what moment 
to join the party in looking about and en- 
joying the prospect. He was also an adept 
in scratching off flies, and had a precision 
in reaching an insect anywhere in his van 
with one of his rear hooves which few of 
us attain in slapping mosquitoes. This ac- 
tion sometimes disquieted persons in the 
phaeton, but Frank knew perfectly well 
what he was about, and if harm had hap- 
pened to the people under his charge my 
friend was sure that Frank could have 
done anything short of applying arnica 
and telegraphing to their friends. His 
varied knowledge of life and his long ex- 
perience had satisfied him that there were 
very few . things to be afraid of in this 
world. Such womanish weaknesses as shy- 
insr and startinjy were far from him, and he 
recjarded the boisterous behavior of loco- 
motives with indifference. He had not, 
indeed, the virtue of one horse offered to my 
friend's purchase, of standing, unmoved, 
[ 41 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

with his nose against a passing express 
train ; but he was certainly not afraid of 
the cars. 

Frank was by no means what Mr. Em- 
erson calls a mush of concession ; he was 
not merely amianle ; he had his moments 
of self-assertion, his touches of asperity. 
It was not safe to pat his nose, like the 
erring Billy's ; he was apt to bring his 
handsome teeth together in proximity to 
the caressing hand with a sharp click and 
a sarcastic grin. Not that he ever did, or 
ever would really bite. So, too, when left 
to stand long under fly-haunted cover, he 
he would start off afterwards with alarm- 
ing vehemence ; and he objected to the 
saddle. On the only occasion when any 
of my friend's family mounted him, he 
trotted gayly over the grass towards the 
house, with the young gentleman on his 
back ; then, without warning, he stopped 
short, a slight tremor appeared to pass 
over him, and liis rider continued the ex- 
[ 42 ] 



BUYING A HORSE 

cursion some ten feet farther, alighting 
lump-wise on a bunch of soft turf which 
Frank had selected for his reception. 

The summer passed, and in the comfort 
of Frank's possession my friend had al- 
most abandoned the idea of ever returning 
him to his owner. He had thoughts of 
making the loan permanent, as something 
on the whole preferable to a purchase. 
The drives continued quite into December, 
over roads as smooth and hard as any in 
June, and the air was delicious. The first 
snow brought the suggestion of sleighing ; 
but that cold weather about Christmas dis- 
persed these gay thoughts, and restored 
my friend to virtue. Word came from the 
stable that Frank's legs were swelling 
from standing so long without going out, 
and my friend resolved to part with an 
animal for which he had no use. I do not 
praise him for this ; it was no more than 
his duty ; but I record his action in order 
to account for the fact that he is again 
[ 43 1 



BUYING A HORSE 

without a horse, and now, with the open- 
ing of the fine weather, is beginning once 
more to think of buying one. 

But he is in no mood of arrogant con- 
fidence. He has satisfied himself that 
neither love nor money is alone adequate 
to the acquisition : the fates also must 
favor it. The horse which Frank's owner 
has had in training may or may not be 
just the horse he wants. He does not 
know ; he humbly waits ; and he trembles 
at the alternative of horses, mystically 
summoned from space, and multitudin- 
ously advancing upon him, parrot-mouthed, 
pony-gaited, tender for'a'd, and traveling 
wide behind. 



[ FINIS ] 



Cbc II\i\icr?ibe pre?;* 

CAMIIRIDGIC . MASSACIIDSKTTS 
U . S . A 



